Most people use a Password Manager to save their account passwords. A password manager is an app or device which serves as a single collection point for all of a user’s account credentials. LastPass and Dashlane are two well-known password managers in the market. The usage of a password manager presents a security risk in case of a data breach. In fact, as per the Independent, the password manager LastPass was hacked and a data breach did occur, compromising user credentials.
Another high-risk method that many users follow is to save their passwords in their browsers, and use auto-fill for convenience.
In today’s world, data breaches are the highest level of threat – don’t forget, all your data is being protected by your passwords! No security initiative can come with 100% convenience – but it is important to understand and prioritize security.
This is even more important for enterprises, where the tools they are providing their users to manage their passwords are eventually protecting the company’s data.
There are enterprise IAM tools available in the market which help enterprises to provide a secure single sign-on (SSO) and other access control lists such as IP- and device restrictions, time and location restrictions, and multi-factor authentication. These functionalities help end users as well as administrators to protect company data with additional layers of protection.
Delving deeper into MFA as a means to improve password security, the trend today is that many leading SaaS providers have started deprecating SMS as the medium to send the OTP, since this is an old-school method and comes with dependencies in order to serve its purpose. The modern and more convenient way to run an MFA is using TOTP and push notification.
Implementing a single sign-on (SSO) with an MFA is a powerful way to boost the security of your passwords while ensuring a minimal compromise on the convenience front. And of course, type your password each time instead of saving it in your browser or a password manager to minimize the security risk.
Your password – your secret passphrase or PIN that you use for your email, social media profile, or applications at work – is necessary for you to gain access to your accounts. But more importantly, your password plays a critical role in ensuring that no one else has access to your accounts, ensuring the security and privacy of your own as well as your organization’s data and applications.
With advancements in technology, it is important to be aware that there are equally advanced ways in which people steal information belonging to others, and even more ways through which they can misuse that information. Therefore, it goes without saying that secure passwords are of prime importance.
Common Password-Related Mistakes
You can’t blame yourself for being naturally inclined to choose a simple password that will be easy to remember. Unfortunately, these are the very same passwords that are also easy to guess or crack with a hacking software. Remember that, if information about you that can be found online – your date of birth, favourite colour, pet’s name, and so on – is incorporated into your password, it becomes even more vulnerable.
Another mistake made by most people is that a common password is used across multiple online accounts. The problem with doing this is, if someone manages to crack your password to one account, you are giving them free access to the rest!
Writing down your password or saving it somewhere online? This is a very naive act that can put your entire online data at risk of being accessed and stolen easily. Some of the other mistakes you might be making when it comes to passwords is that you don’t change the factory-set or default password, you use the same password for too long, and so on.
Tips to Set Up a Secure Password
Create a long password with a minimum length of 10-12 characters
Use a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters
Special characters need to spread out across the password and not be limited to the first or last place
Do not use the same password for multiple security points
Change your passwords every 1-3 months
Avoid using words with obvious references to your personal life
Avoid using dictionary words as a whole
Passwords in the Workplace
In the workplace, the importance of a secure password is further amplified because the breach of a corporate network can have consequences that will affect the entire business.
Employees, who are otherwise the biggest assets to a company or business, also become the weakest link in the security chain protecting its data. The reason? Poor password selection and the subsequent compromise to data security. A single password, if compromised, can open the security gates and let intruders in.
Combating Weak Passwords in the Workplace
A good password policy is the weapon of choice when it comes to combating the threat of weak passwords.
A password policy is a set of guidelines that help users set up strong and secure passwords. When a password policy is enforced, a user is not allowed to create a password that does not abide by these guidelines.
Some essential features of a password policy are:
1) Password Length & Complexity Requirement
The password policy ensures that every password created is of a minimum length (for example, at least 6 characters long) and needs to use a variety of character types (uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, special characters).
2) Minimum & Maximum Password Age
This part of the password policy decides how often a password is to be changed. Ideally, a good password policy ensures the expiry of a password once in 3 months, so the user is forced to create a new password. However, if a policy prompts the user to change their password too often, they may be tempted to write it down or store it elsewhere. This, again, will compromise security.
3) Password History
When a user is prompted to change a password, he/she may tend to reuse a password they had earlier used for the same application. By enforcing a good password policy, users will not be allowed to reuse an old password at least for another 5 times.
4) Number of Failed Attempts
A password policy also establishes the maximum number of invalid attempts allowed before an account will be locked out temporarily. Once locked, the account may need administrator support to be unlocked and made accessible again.
Beyond Password Security
For companies and businesses that use highly-sensitive data, it may be required to go one step beyond just a good password policy that enforces strong passwords. In such cases, a two-factor or multi-factor authentication functionality may be enforced, where additional layers of security are integrated into the sign-in process.
With such a functionality, users will be required to re-validate their identity using one or more of the following:
A one-time password or PIN
A thumbprint or retina scan
A Yubikey, smart card, USB token, or magnetic strip card
Are your users’ weak passwords keeping you up at night? Speak to us to see how Akku can help with Password Policy Enforcement and Multi-factor Authentication.
The System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) is an open standard specification, designed to make user management easy. It essentially allows admins of cloud and on-premise networks to move users in and out of their systems quickly and easily. The system builds on inputs from existing user management schemas and allows the integration of powerful authentication models. It uses a common user schema in coordination with an extension model which allows for seamless migration of user data between different nodes of the system.
SCIM transmits user data between identity providers (like Akku by CloudNow) and service providers (SaaS applications) using a secure protocol. When this is used in conjunction with a robust authorization system, it gives rise to a powerful identity and access management solution. If not for SCIM, the IT departments of every organization would have to dedicate time and resource to managing access control, instead of simply automating the process.
How does SCIM help in Creating a Powerful Identity and Access Management Solution?
Like we mentioned earlier, SCIM enables the communication between the identity provider and an enterprise SaaS application which needs user information to process, create, modify or remove users from accessing a network. SCIM is built using REST and JSON to define and establish the roles of the client and server – in this case, the identity provider acts as the client and the SaaS application acts as the server.
Identity providers like Akku contain a directory of user identities which is normally extracted by the server. In most cases, the server can extract information from directories other than the identity providers as well. But migrating the data to an identity provider can significantly improve the security of the user management system. When the client or identity provider makes changes to any user information, it immediately reflects in the server or SaaS application by using the SCIM protocol. With SCIM, you can create, replace, delete, search and update user information.
The client or identity provider can also view the data present on the server and record any mismatches. If irregularities between the client and server are not immediately noticed and rectified, it could lead to a potential security breach.
How can Akku help you?
With organizations moving their operations to the cloud at breakneck speeds, the need to streamline and implement a Single Sign-on solution is constantly rising. Akku is one of the best Identity and Access Management Solutions available in the market, allowing you to integrate with third party applications as well as our own suite, to take your identity and user management efforts to the next level. This simplifies the work of your organization’s cloud or on-premise network administrators to grant access to several users and applications. For your users, this means remembering only one set of credentials for several applications.
Allowing your users to access your official data from anywhere and at any time sounds like a great idea! They can complete their work even when they are on the move by accessing your company’s cloud-based applications. So, why should we restrict access when it has all these pros?
When you permit unshackled access to your company’s applications from any location and device then you also expose your company’s sensitive data and apps to the risk of security or privacy breaches. The possibility of unauthorized access to your sensitive data is a major concern for any company using cloud-based applications.
Why do you need IP restriction?
IP-based access restriction is a great way to secure and protect your mission-critical business data outside your LAN by preventing access to your apps from any IP addresses other than your trusted whitelisted IP ranges.
How does IP-based restriction work?
An IAM solution offering IP-based restriction uses a customized SAML API and integrates with your cloud-based applications. That way, identity management is brought into a common platform across all service providers, with the IAM solution acting as the identity provider. With the identity provider enabling one point control, it is possible to restrict access to your applications only from permitted locations, regulations and IP addresses.
Why restrict based on device?
Device-based access restriction allows you to allow access for specific users only from authorized devices, to prevent misuse or loss of data – that way, users cannot access applications from devices that have not been approved for their use, and unauthorized people cannot access data from devices that may have been approved for other users.
How does device-based restriction work?
With many IAM solutions, device-based restriction is applied through the use of plugins – however more advanced solutions make use of a certificate-based authentication method which has the major advantage of being tamper proof.
A secure certificate-based authentication is completely platform and browser independent and enables cloud administrators to provide or revoke access to SaaS based applications only from specific devices, even when they are outside the office network. Restricting access based on device helps to minimize data breaches and provides the right access to the right people.
Logging on to different applications using different user credentials every single time is frustrating, isn’t it? The use of a Single Sign On (SSO) application makes it easy to access all your applications with just a single set of login credentials. The SSO acts as the identity provider – a common platform to handle user identity and access across all your applications – and also provides authentication, authorization and access control.
Single Sign On solution offers a secure and convenient way to manage access credentials and user provisioning.
Advantages of Single Sign On (SSO)
Reduce Your Help Desk Costs
Gartner’s research says that about 50% of all calls made to help desks are requests for resetting passwords. In this scenario, deploying a Single Sign On application reduces the time, effort and cost spent by your help desk, resulting in savings for your organization.
User Experience
Through automated login using Single Sign On, users can switch between applications without having to login to each applications each time. This saves employee time and increases productivity.
Reduce Password Fatigue
Users don’t need to remember and manage multiple passwords – SSO reduces the number of passwords to one and makes it much simpler to remember and manage.
Easier Accounts Management
SSO gives clear visibility on what access is permitted for whom. It also helps in improving the speed of adding and disabling the accounts of outgoing employees.
Right Access To The Right People
Admin users can provide or deny access to specific users. For instance, if a particular user in a department wants an application to work on the admin can give access only to that person instead of giving it to the team which could result in confusion.
How does it work?
An SSO acts as an identity provider, acting as a common platform to manage identity and access rules across all of an organization’s cloud apps. When a user connects to the service provider to authenticate their identity, it transfers authentication to the identity provider. The identity provider validates the user’s credentials, and then sends a SAML token to the service provider for accessing the application.
Akku packs a powerful Single Sign On function whose customized SAML enables you to integrate a highly secure Single Sign On (SSO) with any cloud or in-house application, developed on any platform, including support for your intranet.
So, why continue to be frustrated with multiple passwords and multiple user accounts to access multiple applications? Make access easier for users and control easier for administrators with Akku.
Identity and Access Management (or IAM) solutions – also known as Identity Management (IdM) solutions – form a critical component of an enterprise’s IT security. And when used with cloud-based applications, they form part of a powerful cloud security set up too.
In simple terms, an IAM helps to control which users can access what data, as well as from where and when this access is permitted.
So how does an IAM work?
In any Identity and Access Management solution, one of the core concepts at play is that of an Identity Provider (IdP). The IdP brings all of the enterprise’s cloud-based application on to a common platform from where identity information can be managed and authentication services provided through the use of a Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).
Through this process, it becomes possible to establish a single point of control across all of an organization’s cloud applications, and to provide a single point of access to all users, in the form of a Single Sign-on (SSO) – one of the fundamental functionalities of an IAM.
What features do IAMs offer?
Most IAMs offer some or all of the following features:
Single Sign-on
Enables administrators to provide each user with a single login to access any or all of the local and cloud applications used by the organization.
Multi-factor Authentication
Provides a powerful additional layer of access protection through a TOTP or other methods.
Password Policy Enforcement
Enables enforcement of a custom password policy across the organization, to comply with statutory (or the company’s own) security standards.
Is Akku an Identity and Access Management solution?
Akku is indeed an IAM solution, but it’s also so much more. It brings to the table all the security and access restrictions that a standard Identity and Access Management solution has to offer, along with several additional features to boost security and productivity across your cloud environment:
